I Believe: 'We are making it harder and harder for other species to exist'

Feb. 19, 2010

George Plumb, left, speaks at the Central Vermont Climate Action 350 Bicycle Ride he organized last Oct. 24. Plumb, of Washington, is a longtime volunteer environmental activist and is the executive director of Vermonters for Sustainable Population and chairman of the New England Coalition for Sustainable Population. / Courtesy photo, Sylvia L. Plumb

Written by

George Plumb

Almost all of the expressed environmental concern these days is about climate change. However there is another environmental crisis happening that could be just as important, and perhaps even more important, and that is the loss of biodiversity.

The earth is now going through what is the greatest extinction of species since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. We are now losing species at the rate of nearly 30,000 per year. The difference between this extinction and previous ones is that rather than a planetary or galactic process, this one is caused by just one of the species on this planet.

By taking up an increasing amount of space, producing massive pollution, creating climate change and fostering invasive species, we are making it harder and harder for other species to exist. By any ecological measure, Homo sapiens sapiens has well exceeded its carrying-capacity size and is having an adverse impact on all other species.

Why is this important? Isn’t human life more important than other forms of life? Shouldn’t we be concerned only about the future of the human species?

Unfortunately, we cannot separate ourselves from the rest of life, although by living and working largely inside buildings it often seems that way. Nature is a complex system sometimes referred to as the “web of life.” The millions of species exist in a complex and delicate balance that is connected together by food chains, nutrient cycles, hydrological cycles and the climate system. Microbes in the soil are connected to plants, plants to animals — and everything is connected to air, water and sun.

If we were to lose all the bees on Earth due to colony collapse, or all the bats due to white-nose syndrome, our food supply would suffer badly as there would be a lack of pollination, or plants could be overrun by insects. Living organisms produce and clean our air, filter our water, control floods, store carbon, distribute nutrients and provide many other ecosystem services. With such complex and fragile ecosystems we never know what the impact of the loss of a certain species might mean to our own survival.

We probably can adjust to a warming planet, although there will be increasing suffering by millions of people. However, the warming planet with the droughts, desertification and rising sea levels also will change the space available for other species. Biodiversity needs space in the form of land, forests, wetlands and oceans in order to exist. That amount of space is fixed, and the ability to move safely and freely between appropriate habitats has been greatly compromised.

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By the 1850s in Vermont, humans had altered so much of the land we had to reintroduce deer and beaver. Later we reintroduced fisher, turkey, Peregrine falcons and bald eagle. Wolves and mountain lions still are missing.

About 50 percent of the planet’s land mass has been transformed for human use, and that percentage is increasing as the human population grows. In Vermont alone, according to the latest data available, we are consuming about 10 square miles per year. We need space to grow food, produce fiber, provide fuel for heating and for our infrastructure of homes, businesses and transportation.

The United Nations now projects the human population to grow from its current 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion by the year 2050. Each year we add an additional 80 million people who eat a lot of food, use more energy and do major damage to our ecosystems and species. Although world fertility rates have declined some in recent decades in many countries, they still range from three to seven children. In the United States, fully half of all pregnancies are unplanned, and the fertility of 2.1 is now at the highest level since 1971.

Biodiversity also is important to our quality of life. Worldwide, 12 percent of mammals, 12 percent of birds, 30 percent of reptiles and amphibians and 37 percent of fish are threatened with extinction. I personally have seen a dramatic decline and disappearance of some species of birds where I live, and this has affected my quality of life.

Even though some species might disappear with little or no immediate human impact, we have an ethical responsibility to maintain populations of other species. In addition to a physical connection, there is a spiritual connection with all life, and we need to recognize that connection and responsibility no matter what our religious beliefs.

The individual Vermonter can do several things to help insure we maintain our rich biodiversity so essential to life.

Most importantly, we can inform our elected leaders about this issue and ask them to fully support voluntary family planning at the state, national and international level. This begins by talking with our families, friends and co-workers about the population issue.

To maintain biodiversity we must stabilize the growth of the human species so that we don’t take up more and more space.

Our elected leaders also need to develop government policies that protect land and support conservation of habitat and long-term planning for it.

We also can do such things as buying local as much as possible, buying organic, buying shade-grown coffee, eating lower on the food chain and reducing our consumption of material goods. We can plant native species that support birds, butterflies and pollinators. Getting out of doors, particularly with children, increases awareness and appreciation of biodiversity. In the winter, learning the tracks of different animals is lots of fun.

We can support organizations that work to educate people about the benefits of having smaller families, such as the international Population Media Center which is based in Shelburne, and the International Federation of Planned Parenthood, which provides family-planning services.

Through the empowerment of women, education of all people and universal access to birth control, we can stabilize our population at a level that is within the earth’s carrying capacity. This also will decrease human poverty and crowding, increase our standard of living and sustain the lives of plants, animals and ecosystems everywhere.

The most active environmental organization on the biodiversity and population issue is the Center for Biological Diversity and it has a regional office in Richmond. The Nature Conservancy also has been a great protector of biodiversity worldwide through its habitat-protection efforts.

Climate change and biodiversity are closely related issues. Let’s be concerned about both of them, make our own efforts to address these issues no matter how small they seem to be, and support the efforts of organizations that are working to address them.